Students receive Walter All-Scholastic Award

Saturday

Apr 14, 2012 at 4:01 AM

By LINDA HALL

Staff Writer

WOOSTER -- Tri-County Educational Service Center awarded three students the annual Franklin B. Walter All-Scholastic Award, for which they also will be recognized at a ceremony at the state level in Columbus.

Award winners were Rebecca Zook, Chippewa High School; Haley Meyer, West Holmes High School; and Thomas Ziebro, Black River High School.

"This is really a special honor," Tri-County ESC Superintendent Gene Linton told board members at their April meeting.

It is not based on academic achievement alone, but also upon being "good community members who lead active lives," Linton said.

Each year just one student is chosen from each of Ohio's 88 counties.

Each of the tri-county students honored was given a cash award.

Zook said she plans to attend either Ohio University or Ohio Wesleyan to study journalism. Meyer will pursue nursing at Indiana Wesleyan. Ziebro will study mechanical engineering at Ohio State University.

Linton gave the board an update about students who will attend Tri-County International Academy, housed at Wooster High School, to join the International Baccalaureate Degree program.

"We ended up with 28 students coming in as juniors," Linton said, and a waiting list of five.

Linton is pleased with this year's diversity of school districts taking part.

Three districts -- Mapleton, Chippewa and Ashland -- will send their first IB candidates in the 2012-13 school year.

"The success of the program is catching on," Linton said. "Last year, 80 percent of the (senior class) got (official) IB diplomas, which is incredible."

Eighteen seniors will complete the program next year.

"Hopefully, from here on out we'll be able to keep that (class) full," he said.

Linton also gave the board a brief summary of the status of the ESC's contracts for services with area school districts.

"Most of them are holding pretty steady on the kinds of things they're purchasing (from us)," Linton said, having "completed almost all of the superintendent interviews."

Tri-County ESC will file two documents for each district -- one demonstrating the district has chosen Tri-County as its service provider; and the second, contracting the specific services it will purchase.

"(It is) a much cleaner way to do it," Linton said, based on the biennial budget giving school districts the right to choose which educational service centers will meet their needs for supplemental programs.

The first contract will be on file with the Ohio Department of Education, and the second will serve as an addendum each year for actual services purchased by each district, Linton said.

Linton and board member Susie Lawson discussed pending legislation, including the "Labor Day" bill, House Bill 191, proposing changing the school calendar to begin with Labor Day and the amount of time Ohio students would be required to be in school from 182 days to a specific number of hours, depending on grade level.

"They did remove that portion (dealing with the length of the school year) from the bill," Linton said.

"The only thing that happened is they changed days to hours," Lawson said.

Lawson talked about legislation involving charging schools more for putting an issue on a special election ballot, pension reform, the third-grade guarantee related to students being academically prepared to move to fourth-grade; state report cards, and teacher and principal evaluations.

Referring to the third-grade guarantee, which would require intervention specialists, Lawson said, it seems to be "another case of a lot of policies ... but no dollars to follow them up."

"(Legislators) haven't done too much lately," Linton said, but "when they come back (from break) there should be some action on some of the bills."

The new principal and teacher evaluation pieces need some "clarification and education," Linton said.

A movement toward using outside evaluators or administrators to conduct them has resulted from discovering "how time-consuming" the evaluation procedures will be, he said.

"Who are the outside evaluators?" Linton asked.

Should legislators ask Tri-County employees to do the task, there would need to be money to hire and pay people for the additional workload.

"There is no one here not already busy," Linton said.

Reporter Linda Hall can be reached at 330-264-1125, Ext. 2230, or lhall@the-daily-record.com.

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